[Coral-List] Coral-List Digest, Vol 167, Issue 13 - Message #2 Eugene Shinn
ddugger biocepts.com
ddugger at biocepts.com
Tue Jul 19 13:28:10 UTC 2022
Gene,
Your comment is probably the most interesting and informative I have seen on the Coral List. Thank you.
Durwood M. Dugger
Message: 2
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2022 17:00:37 -0400
From: Eugene Shinn <eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Subject: [Coral-List] Vietnam bans scuba diving to protect a coral
reef
Message-ID: <a0047861-9247-5f59-744b-e92c2fd4f6e5 at mail.usf.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Thank You Doug for helping me make my point. When humans become ill
research is initiated in order to determine which bacterium, fungi,
toxin, or virus is causing the illness. COVID-19 provides a good recent
example. We know COVID is caused by a virus that has been identified. We
are shown its name and there are SEM photos showing what it looks like.
Can we do the same for many of the various coral diseases? Of course
not. What we are given is a slew of things associated with various coral
diseases. For example, there is a long list such as, ballast water,
divers, anchors, boats, touching, fertilizers, and also there is iron,
copper, mercury, lead 210, pesticides, and Beryllium 7 transported in
the atmosphere. I agree that elevated water temperature is leading to
bleaching but do we know if there is also a microbe or toxic element
facilitated by the warm water? I don?t know. I agree this may be
splitting hairs but if it were humans in-stead of corals there would be
millions devoted to finding the exact cause or causes. You and I both
know that no agency is going to fund that kind of research. In addition,
which journals would publish research results that counter the
prevailing paradigms? That?s why I mentioned the oil experiments as
examples. If those simple experiments had resulted in coral-death
science journals would be happy to publish the results. It?s just human
nature and politics. I was once privy to some oil toxicity experiment
results from studies conducted at Texas A and M. Many showed little
effect of crude oil on the test organisms. Processed oil is another
story. I was overseeing that work representing the American Petroleum
Institute that funded the research. I knew all the grad students
conducting the experiments and none wanted to publish the results. They
feared it would affect their careers or future job opportunities. The
main reason I mentioned the oil experiments earlier is because the
effect of crude oil on marine organisms was what the multimillion-dollar
Australian Barrier reef hearings in Australia were all about. It had to
do with whether the government was, or was not, going to allow drilling
in the vicinity of the barrier reef. That should not surprise anyone.
Those hearings went on for more than two years. Clearly knowing the
effect of oil on corals was considered very important. I sat in the
witness box for more than two days answering the Lawyers questions. What
I saw guiding it all was not so much science but mainly strong emotions.
In the end the drilling was not allowed but I certainly learned a lot
about people. It helped me decide it was time to change jobs. Today not
much has changed. All of this happened in the early 1970s at least a
decade before the present crop of coral researchers and activists were born.
I did not know then that my long experience with coral reefs would again
lead to my next career involving coral reefs. I joined the U. S.
Geological Survey not knowing that in addition to other subjects it
would also involve coral reefs not only in Florida but also the the
Caribbean, and the Marshall Islands. As list readers know Staghorn and
Elkhorn forests (A. /cervicornis/, and A. /palmata/) in Florida and the
Caribbean began declining in the late 1970s peaking in 1983. That
decline continues today and involves many more species. There were
plenty of divers in 1983 but coral decline did not involve divers
touching them. At the same time the spiny urchin /Diadema/ began dying
all over the Caribbean. Clearly touching had nothing to do with their
Caribbean-wide demise. Ironically in the beginning their demise pleased
many divers. They were no longer being stuck by those painful
pincushions and few knew they were vital for coral reef health. However,
that soon changed. Many of us assumed it was human development and
sewage causing coral disease in the Florida Keys. Remember there were no
fast-food restaurants, few motels and no dive shops in the keys when I
began diving in the keys. As human population and businesses began to
prolificate it seemed logical that coral diseases were related to
population growth. Because of that supposed connection I put together a
research group and began installing monitoring wells both on land and
under water on the premise that sewage from septic tanks and shallow
disposal wells were the sources for something (we did not know what)
that sickened Corals and /Diadema/. While learning everything we could
about Keys ground water and its movement We also began to learn about
similar problems throughout the Caribbean. Coral reef demise soon became
an even larger mystery. Everyone seemed to have their own theory about
the cause of coral demise. Rising water temperature had not yet been
suggested and admittedly systematic temperature monitoring did not yet
exist. Cold fronts and cold water was clearly killing nearshore corals.
Harold Hudson started a wide spread temperature monitoring program when
he joined the Marine Sanctuary and modern temperature monitoring devices
became available.
One day I saw an article about African Dust. It was an article about Dr.
joe Prospero who had begun to monitor atmospheric dust on the Island of
Barbados in the eastern Caribbean. He had begun the study in 1965
looking for dust from outer space. What he found instead was red/brown
soil dust that many called Saharan dust. I had known Joe and his work
back then and considered it a purely academic project. Later I had an
experience with dust in the Keys while on vacation in the summer of
1973. I could hardly see land while offshore in my boat. I did not know
what it was. Joes dust graph graph in the article showed dust had
increased that year in his dust trap out in Barbados. I next read about
Charles Darwin?s experience with dust landing on the Beagle during his
famous voyage. It had sickened many of the ship?s crew*. At this point I
will skip a few years forward because this is a long much more involved
story which is described in my Memoir, ?Boot Strap Geologist.? *
As many already know, with initial funding from NASA I was able to put
together a larger project consisting of a coral biologist, a geochemist,
and two microbiologists to study what was being carried in African dust.
There are many publications on the subject. During the study we found
toxic metals, radioactive elements, pesticides, and around 200 species
of viable bacteria and fungi (and many more viruses). I learned that
asthma was rampant in the windward islands where there was no industrial
activity. Human health was being affected by African dust in those
islands. Even the military became interested because our microbiologists
had cultured several live species of /Bacillus species/ in the dust but
fortunately not /Bacillus anthraces,/ the one that causes anthrax. The
attack on the World Trade Centers and the anthrax letters that followed
elevated interest in our research. We were contacted by several other
agencies. I retired from the USGS in 2006 because strangely the funding
for our work abruptly ended. Fortunately the USF College of Marine
Science which was next door adopted me and provided a new office. I did
not lose interest in dust and its various effects on the environment.
Because of what is happening today I continue to monitor reef health,
and the reemergence of /Diadema/ disease that is presently happening
again in the eastern Caribbean. With the changing climate and drying up
of lake Chad and other water bodies in the African Sahel, dust storms
have become more severe. They are now mentioned on the Weather Channel
and other weather reports. Also there are now many more satellites that
display images of African dust storms. There were only a few satellites
back then and their images were not as sharp as todays images. Many more
agencies are now aware of the possible effects of African dust and dust
storms have increased in recent years. We are in the middle of dust
season as I write this post. To my knowledge the health of coral reefs
has not improved and you can be sure divers are not touching /Diadema./
This time their locations and progression through the Caribbean is being
carefully mapped. You can track it?s progress on a map at, ?Diadema
Response Network.? This time the disease began up wind and up current in
the eastern Caribbean but has recently moved down current to the Florida
Keys. The only good news is there is now a concerted effort to determine
exactly what microbe/virus or chemical may be causing their demise. Gene
More information about the Coral-List
mailing list